Texas Supreme Court: Alex Jones, website can be sued by Sandy Hook parents

AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Supreme Court on Friday rejected, without comment, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ attempt to toss out four defamation lawsuits by parents of children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012.

The parents sued in Travis County, where Jones and his Infowars website are based, arguing that they were defamed and suffered emotional distress after Infowars broadcasts disputed the authenticity of the school shooting and the news coverage that followed.

Twenty students and six adults were shot and killed at the Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Connecticut.

Friday’s action by the Supreme Court upheld rulings by two lower courts that had allowed the lawsuits to continue.

The state’s highest civil court also gave the green light to another defamation lawsuit against Infowars and reporter Kit Daniels by a man mistakenly identified as a suspect in the 2018 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida.

The photo of Marcel Fontaine, who was not the shooter, remained on the Infowars website for 13 hours, and no correction was issued at the time explaining the mistaken identification, court records show.

Friday’s Sandy Hook rulings will allow four lawsuits to proceed:

♦ Neil Heslin, father of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, filed two lawsuits taking exception to statements by Jones alleging that the school shooting at Sandy Hook was “a giant hoax” and disputing Heslin’s claim that he had held his dead son in his arms afterward.

♦ The lawsuit by Scarlett Lewis, mother of Jesse Lewis, noted statements by Jones that the school shooting was “as phony as a three-dollar bill” as well as other statements on Infowars implying that parents were not genuinely grieving the loss of their children.

♦ Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, parents of 6-year-old Noah Pozner, quoted broadcasts in which Jones cast the school shooting as a “false flag” hoax intended to create a pretext for the government to limit gun rights.